2007, Volume 99 Number 4

Okak's fate is finding new relevance in the age of global pandemics

The Last Days of Okak tells the story of Okak, Labrador, an Innu community and Moravian outpost. In 1918, Okak was visited by a Moravian ship carrying supplies — and the Spanish influenza. Within days, the adult population was dead, and Okak was gone.

Yet this riveting, terrible story is more than a vital piece of history. Okak's fate is finding new relevance in the age of global pandemics.

Filmmaker Nigel Markham first discovered the story of Okak while working as a researcher with Them Days and the Labrador Inuit Association. "I met Martha Joshua, who was one of the survivors. She was the one who was saved by one of the dogs. It was so amazing. And she was still alive. I had interviewed her a couple of times on audiotape, and I thought it would make a great film." Markham was also shooting for CBC-TV, and, when he went looking for a collaborator, found Anne Budgell, a CBC journalist, close at hand. The two applied for a grant with the (now defunct) Explorations Program with the Canada Council, received $9,000, and went out and shot their footage. They found and interviewed seven of the eight remaining survivors, and accessed old diaries and photographs.

Photo: Matthew Crowe

The editing process was drawn out, due to a lack of funding. "Mike Jones was encountering the same trouble with The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood," said Markham. But then the National Film Board reviewed both projects, liked what it saw, and helped the filmmakers get hold of a Steenbeck (a flatbed film editing suite) — the first Steenbeck the Newfoundland Independent Filmmaker's Co-operative would own. With this help, Markham finished Okak.

The resulting documentary is a direct, genuine and unflinching record of the tragedy.

"It's a snapshot, a minutia of history," said Markham. "I've since become aware of how significant a moment it was. Okak was a centre for the Innu and the Moravians and it was wiped out. It left a gaping hole between Hebron and Nain. There's no question the whole coast, and the whole history of the coast would have been different if Okak had survived. Hebron probably wouldn't have been resettled...but we didn't go there. We told the story straight up.

Photo: Matthew Crowe

"(The film) has had a long life," said Markham. "There is a Inuktitut version that has had a constant life. With (the then) CBC Northern Service it was a perennial player." Okak has also been used in schools and MUN history courses and is listed in the NFB catalogue.

And then, through a convoluted, worldwide network that includes a Canadian Cultural attaché, some connections between the Canadian and Asian medical communities, and the general fear of a new global influenza strain, the film came to the attention of Taiwanese officials who were studying the spread of AIDS and also preparing for a pandemic outbreak of Asian flu. In January 2006, Markham was flown to Taiwan as part of an initiative shared by the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, the Taiwan Centre for Disease Control, and the National Yang-Ming University.

"They were also interested in the effect of a pandemic on people on the margins of health care, and aboriginals," said Markham. "I didn't know there were aboriginals in Taiwan, but in fact there are several groups, indigenous peoples who were there, before the Chinese, who arrived about 400 years ago — about the same time the Europeans arrived in North America, so there are parallels. Some of them are on the smaller islands; they are isolated, and maybe genetically different, less resistant to the disease."

Photo: Matthew Crowe

The Okak experience also has applications for 'Bird flu', "which they are really afraid of over there."

Markham screened his film for medical groups and, later, film and journalism students. Then aboriginal groups began asking to see it. "They are like the aboriginal groups in Canada were in the '60s, finding themselves, finding independence. They have a lot of questions." Okak will be part of the University's upcoming film festival, and be used by the institution's proposed aboriginal research ethics team.

Markham is enjoying the renewed attention the documentary is receiving — but his initial response to revisiting the film was not wholly positive.

"When I first looked at it again, I cringed. It seemed so primitive. But after watching it ten times in Taiwan I've become more reconciled. It's absolutely authentic. It's an amazing collection of photographs. The missionary we used to tell the story was a composite, but a composite of diary entries written at the time. It's all directly from the source."